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A Penny Change

You know, there are an awful lot of cynics out there. Allow us to explain.
A lot of our prices are rounded down to the nearest 9p. As in 99p, £9.99, £99.99 etc.
Y’all come in and accuse us of trying to hoodwink you into believing that our prices are lower: lower than a squid, lower than a cockle, lower than a one-er. And this simply isn’t so. Although we do of course like you to think that we are a very moderately priced emporium.
You see, we know that most of you are going to toss the penny aside. Most of you don’t like pennies. Few of you are thrifty enough to gather them, hoard them, count them, bank them.
And many of you simply ask us if we have a charity box.
The answer is that we do. And our pricing ‘structure’ (pfft – grand word for a little shop), as we suspect is the case for many a wee corner shop, is our way of filling that charity box. (This particular cornershop gives its unwanted coppers to Kids Company, just in case you wanted to know.)
So we got to thinking. What if we could kind of institutionalise that price structure? What if all shops (yes, big ones as well) dropped their prices by a penny…and then donated the unwanted coins, to local charities, to a new charity, to those who need help. That way a penny change could make an awful lot of changes.
So are there any benevolent entrepreneurs out there who could make this happen? We’ve got the enthusiasm: we’ve already checked and the URL is available. We just need some meat and muscle. Where’s Mary Queen of Shops when you need her?
Or is this a very very silly, Pollyanna-esque idea born out of too many long day-dreaming hours behind the counter?